Kelso Home for Girls

Last updated
Kelso Home for Girls
KelsoHomeOEAdams2008.jpg
Kelso Home for Girls
General information
TypeOrphanage
Town or city Baltimore, Maryland,
CountryU.S.
OpenedSeptember 27, 1925

The Kelso Home for Girls, formerly the Kelso Home and Orphan Asylum in Baltimore, Maryland, was a 19th-century orphanage and school building for girls on East Baltimore Street in the Jonestown/Old Town neighborhood, east of the Jones Falls. It was founded by businessman and philanthropist Thomas Kelso, (1784–1878), a former member of the old Methodist Episcopal Church, and inaugurated in January 1874. Formerly the Towson Family YMCA, it is now the Y of Central Maryland Towson Family Center.

History

Relocation of the Kelso Home for Girls to Towson [1] took place September 27, 1925. Originally, it was thought that the campus would accommodate both boys and girls, but with the advent of donated property in Eldersburg, Maryland, the boys were located to the Strawbridge Home for Boys. [2] [3] The site was purchased for $300,000 from the heirs of Thomas W. Offutt who had acquired it from the Amos Matthews / Woodbine [4] estate, to erect the home on its 17-acre (6.9 ha) natural campus at 600 West Chesapeake avenue, Towson.

The design of the Towson facility is credited to Otto Eugene Adams, a Maryland architect. The original building, a brick Colonial structure, contained accommodations for 80 girls, an assembly hall, infirmary, play rooms, and other features. Several outbuildings were to have been added at a later date, but were never completed. Thomas Hicks & Son Inc., were contracted to erect the building, the original cost being estimated at $100,000. [5]

A dedication of the completed home, presided over by Methodist Episcopal Bishop William McDowell, occurred in 1925. Several prominent Methodists and other friends of the institution attended the dedicatory services, including Revs. Dr. F. R. Bayley, Dr. J. B. Gillum, and Dr. E. T. Mowbray, district superintendents of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church; Louis Moller, president of the board of trustees of the home; Walter Kirwan, secretary to the board of managers for the home; and Mrs. Ella J. Kilcourse, superintendent of the home. Milton W. Gatch, lay organizer of fundraising for the new home, officially presented it to the bishop. Accounts from the attending guests describe the home's interior appointments as having wide hallways and a bright living room with cretonne curtains, that opened into a sun parlor. The home's dining room was furnished with Windsor chairs and tables. The smaller children were grouped into dormitories, [6] having ivory-colored woodwork and beds, while the older girls were to be settled into single and double rooms that had mahogany-colored furniture. [7]

In 1958, under the direction of W. Gibbs McKenney, president of the board of the home, the campus and structure were sold to the Baltimore YMCA organization for use as the Towson Family YMCA branch. [8] The Kelso Home organization [9] had 85 years of service behind it at the time (1958) the charity moved from Towson. The girls orphanage was named for its original benefactor, Thomas Kelso, (1784–1878), who began the charity at a location in eastern downtown Baltimore neighborhood of Jonestown/Old Town, east of the Jones Falls. [10]

The Y of Central Maryland completed a master plan for Towson in 1995, then generated a "feasibility study and preliminary design" for phased renovation of what would be a 60,000-square-foot (5,600 m2) facility in 2000. In January 2008 those schemes were superseded by a plan to raze all the buildings on the site.

Demolition of the Kelso Home building - front facade KelsoHome SE.jpg
Demolition of the Kelso Home building - front facade
Demolition of the Kelso Home building - view from existing fitness-center entry KelsoHome NE.jpg
Demolition of the Kelso Home building - view from existing fitness-center entry

Baltimore County government and the current owner, Y of Central Maryland, are involved in an arrangement where the county would purchase 4 to 5 acres (about 2 ha) of the property for use as recreational fields. [11] Design of a new 45,000 s.f. facility, to be begun in 2010, was unveiled by the YMCA of Central Maryland at a fundraiser. Development as stated "specifically designed to garner LEED certification" will not however seek credit available under that programs 'Materials and Resources (MR)' Credits 1/1.1 or 1.2. for 'Building Reuse'. Plans are to raze all existing structures after completion of the new facility. [12] [13]

Related Research Articles

Towson, Maryland Census-designated place in Maryland, United States

Towson is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 55,197 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Baltimore County and the second-most populous unincorporated county seat in the United States.

Enoch Pratt American businessman (1808-1896)

Enoch Pratt was an American businessman in Baltimore, Maryland. Pratt was also a committed active Unitarian, and a philanthropist. He is best known for his donations to establish the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore and expanding the former Sheppard Asylum to become The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital,, located north of the city in western Towson, county seat of Baltimore County. Born and raised in Massachusetts, he moved south to the Chesapeake Bay area and became devoted to the civic interests of the city of Baltimore. He earned his fortune as an owner of business interests beginning in the 1830s originally as a hardware wholesaler, and later expanding into railroads, banking and finance, iron works, and steamship lines and other transportation companies.

Johnny Unitas Stadium Sports stadium in Towson, Maryland

Johnny Unitas Stadium is a multi-purpose sports stadium in Towson, Maryland, United States. The home of several Towson University athletics teams, it is also known as Minnegan Field at Johnny Unitas Stadium or Unitas Stadium.

Dulaney High School Public high school in Timonium, Maryland, United States

Dulaney High School is a secondary school in Timonium, Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The school serves a generally upper-middle class suburban community, with students from Timonium and surrounding areas in Baltimore County. Dulaney is a Blue Ribbon School and ranked #259 nationwide in Newsweek magazine's 2010 survey of top public high schools in the U.S. It is situated on 45 acres (180,000 m2) adjacent to Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens. Their main rival is Towson High School.

Atholton High School Public secondary school in Columbia, Maryland, United States

Atholton High School is a high school in Columbia, Maryland, United States and is a part of the Howard County public school system. The school hosts an Army JROTC program. The school mascot is the Raider.

Concordia Preparatory School (CPS) is a co-educational parochial secondary school serving grades 6-12. Originally known as Baltimore Lutheran School, the school is located in Towson, Maryland, United States. CPS is operated by the Baltimore Lutheran High School Association, Inc., an association of Lutheran churches in the Baltimore area.

Baltimore County Public Library Public library system of Baltimore County, Maryland, United States

Baltimore County Public Library (BCPL), established in 1948, is a public library system located in central Maryland and headquartered in Towson, Maryland BCPL serves Baltimore County, Maryland, which surrounds but does not include the city of Baltimore. Still, occasionally the two library systems share resources and expertise.

These are the former and current buildings and structures of Towson University and its predecessor institutions.

John Rudolph Niernsee Prominent Architect and Confederate Officer (1814-1885)

John Rudolph Niernsee was an American architect. He served as the head architect for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Rudolph also largely contributed to the design and construction of the South Carolina State House located in Columbia, South Carolina. Along with his partner, James Crawford Neilson, Rudolph established the standard for professional design and construction of public works projects within Baltimore and across different states in the United States.

Thomas Dixon was a Presbyterian architect born in Wilmington, Delaware and one of the founders of the Baltimore chapter of AIA. He was the father of minister Thomas Freeman Dixon, an 1893 graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary. He partnered with his brother, James M. Dixon, from 1851 until James's death in 1863. In 1871, he partnered with another well-known Baltimore architect Charles L. Carson for some time doing business from their offices at 117 Baltimore Street as Thomas Dixon and Charles L. Carson until sometime before 1877 when the partnership was dissolved. In 1827, he was elected Honorary Academician at the National Academy of Design.

Towson United Methodist Church Church in Maryland, United States

Towson United Methodist Church is a large United Methodist Church in the historic Hampton subdivision of Towson, a suburb in Baltimore County, Maryland. Its past, rooted in 19th-century America and subsequent growth in the two centuries since then, has closely paralleled the nation's political and sociological trends. It was a congregation split asunder in 1861 on the eve of the American Civil War in a border state of divided loyalties, which eventually reunited and built a church in the post–World War II era of the 1950s, a time of reconciliation and rapid growth by mainline Protestant denominations, especially in the more affluent suburbs.

Thomas Kelso American philanthropist (1784–1878)

Thomas Kelso (1784–1878) was an Irish-American philanthropist and businessman, who was born in Clones, a market town in the north of Ireland, August 28, 1784. He died on the morning of July 26, 1878 at his home of many years on East Baltimore Street in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of 94.

Otto Eugene Adams (Sr.), the architect, was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 1, 1889, to a family with Baltimore and German ancestry.

The District Court of Maryland for Baltimore County District Courthouses are located in Towson, Catonsville and Essex and serve as the courts of first impression for the majority of residents in the state of Maryland. Jurisdiction of the District Court includes most landlord- tenant cases, small claims for amounts up to $5,000, replevin actions, motor vehicle violations, misdemeanors, certain felonies, and peace and protective orders. The District Courts also have concurrent jurisdiction with the Circuit Court over civil lawsuits where the amount in controversy is between $5,001 and $30,000.

John "Jack" Thomas was an All-American lacrosse player at Johns Hopkins University from 1972 to 1974.

St. Pauls Episcopal Church (Baltimore, Maryland) Historic church in Maryland, United States

St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church, more commonly called Old St. Paul's Church today, is a historic Episcopal church located at 233 North Charles Street at the southeast corner with East Saratoga Street, in Baltimore, Maryland, near "Cathedral Hill" on the northern edge of the downtown central business district to the south and the Mount Vernon-Belevedere cultural/historic neighborhood to the north. It was founded in 1692 as the parish church for the "Patapsco Parish", one of the "original 30 parishes" of the old Church of England in colonial Maryland.

Charles L. Carson, was an architect born in Baltimore, the oldest son of Daniel Carson, a builder, and one of the founders of the Baltimore chapter of AIA. Carson had little formal training as an architect. Around 1870 he partnered with Thomas Dixon (architect) while taking drawing lessons at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Carson and Dixon worked from their offices at 117 Baltimore Street as Thomas Dixon and Charles L. Carson until sometime before 1877 when the partnership was dissolved. In 1888 he hired Joseph Evans Sperry who became his chief assistant, and later his partner and successor.

Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital Hospital in Maryland, United States

The Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, known to many simply as Sheppard Pratt, is a psychiatric hospital located in Towson, a northern suburb of Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1853, it is one of the oldest private psychiatric hospitals in the nation. Its original buildings, designed by architect Calvert Vaux, and its Gothic gatehouse, built in 1860 to a design by Thomas and James Dixon, were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971.

Lafayette Square (Baltimore) Historic site

Lafayette Square, is a historic city park and district in the Sandtown-Winchester area of West Baltimore, Maryland. It is bounded by Lanvale Street and Lafayette, Arlington, and Carrollton Avenues.

Grafton Marsh Bosley American physician, philanthropist, planner (1825–1901)

Grafton Marsh Bosley was a physician, philanthropist, planner, and politician. He was the son of Amon Bosley and Rebecca Marsh Bosley. He attended Dickinson College and University of Maryland Medical School. He married Margaretta M. Nicholson on May 5, 1857, and they had a single son, Arthur L. Bosley, before his wife's death in 1885.

References

  1. "Archived copy". external.bcpl.lib.md.us. Archived from the original on 29 August 2002. Retrieved 17 January 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. $350,000 Appeal Is Inaugurated by Methodist Church, Funds Raised Will Benefit Kelso Home for Girls and Strawbridge Home for Boys, Baltimore (Morning) Sun, December 31, 1924
  3. "Carroll County Times Article for 17 October 1999". hscc.carr.org. Archived from the original on 16 June 2003. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  4. "BCPL History and Genealogy - A Brief History of West Towson". www.bcplonline.org. Archived from the original on 17 February 2006. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  5. Real Estate Deals and Building News, Erection of $100,000 Structure for Kelso Home Soon to Begin to Accommodate 80 Girls, Baltimore (Morning) Sun, July 11, 1924
  6. "Two local women in their 80s maintain friendship begun as orphans at Kelso Home for Girls in 1938". Baltimore Sun . Retrieved 2016-08-28.
  7. New Kelso Home Dedication Is Held, Bishop McDowell of M.E. Church Officiates at Towson Services, Many Attend Exercises, Baltimore (Morning) Sun September 27, 1925
  8. Enoch Pratt Library vertical file, Kelso Home for Girls, Baltimore Evening Sun March 3, 1958
  9. Methodists to Hear of Child Care. (1949, December 17). The Washington Post, 12. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The Washington Post (1877 - 1991) database. (Document ID: 213817622).
  10. The Late Thomas Kelso.; Interesting Reminiscences of the Life of the Baltimore Philanthropist, The New York Times, July 27, 1878
  11. Partnership key to land sale, Towson Times, October 15, 2008 - pg.4
  12. Design for 'bright and shining' Towson Y unveiled Campaign under way for new $12 million facility, Towson Times, May 26, 2010
  13. Green building design and construction, U.S. Green Building Council, 2009 ISBN   978-1-932444-14-8

Coordinates: 39°20′49″N76°45′38″W / 39.34694°N 76.76056°W / 39.34694; -76.76056